The st. Oswald's Day Celebrations: “Carnival” versus “Sobriety” in an Australian Drug Enthusiast Group

Abstract

“St. Oswald's Day” is celebrated each year in Canberra, Australia, in a day devoted to drug using and excess. “St. Oswald” is an invention of a group of illicit drug users, who parody orthodox religion and satirise straight society in the celebration. The group are drug enthusiasts — that is, while not dependent users of any illicit drug their drug use, in both its variety and intensity, is much more than recreational. Drawing on both interview data with twenty-seven “Oswaldians” and participant observation with the group, the article outlines the nature of St. Oswald's Day, followed by a discussion of the methods used and of the group itself. It is shown that the group, while very unconventional, exhibits social solidarity and organisation, in strong contrast to the images of anomie, disorganisation and pathology emphasised in conventional accounts of drug use. The article closes by discussing how St. Oswald's Day confronts the “sobriety” of modern society (an epitomisation of the Protestant Ethic) with an image of “carnival” (epitomising the Hedonist Ethic) and suggests that much conventional treatment of drug use is blind to questions of historical context and social structure.